Reporting for home service businesses
Compare your branches, even when the systems differ.
Examples of what we could build for a home service group.
Talk through what you needCompare the work on the same terms.
Useful questions can cross the boundaries of a branch or a system:
- Do job results look the same after actual payroll and follow-up work are included?
- Which branches count revenue or direct costs differently?
- Where does an acquired business still depend on a spreadsheet handoff?
A fair comparison needs consistent reporting periods, branch mappings and cost definitions. Follow-up work can only be attributed when the records support the link.
Start with one branch comparison.
A possible first build brings agreed revenue and direct-cost measures together across selected branches. The report shows the records behind each result and the differences that need checking. The office gets a review queue showing which job and accounting records need checking, which branch they belong to and what information is missing.
Relevant sources may include job management, time or payroll records, purchasing, customer records and accounting. We assess what the first build needs and what the source systems can provide.
Build around the job software that works for you.
Many service-management tools already provide job costing. Ridgepole's role is to address the remaining work across systems, entities or definitions, or to build a workflow your existing setup does not cover.
Questions from branch operators
Can we include recently acquired businesses?
We can assess their records and map the relevant locations, periods and categories into an agreed group view. Differences that cannot yet be reconciled should stay visible.
Can we account for callbacks or follow-up visits?
That depends on whether visits, labor and costs can be linked to the original work. We check the available identifiers and agree how to treat those costs before building the comparison.